


(When You Die) Say You Won't Die At All

by 17603



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, artkink, dead things, graverobbers au, surgery and blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-26
Updated: 2012-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/17603/pseuds/17603
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Murder Act of 1752 decreed the bodies of executed murderers free game for medical dissection, lifting the strict quotas of cadavers allocated for research, but there still aren't enough to go around. Only the Royal College of Physicians and the Company of Barber-Surgeons are allowed to have the official corpses, wheeled to them fresh from the gallows, and a lot of murderers find new purpose on the tables of the official institutions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(When You Die) Say You Won't Die At All

**Author's Note:**

> I was encouraged to finish this. It probably would have languished forever incomplete otherwise.

The Murder Act of 1752 decreed the bodies of executed murderers free game for medical dissection, lifting the strict quotas of cadavers allocated for research, but there still aren't enough to go around. Only the Royal College of Physicians and the Company of Barber-Surgeons are allowed to have the official corpses, wheeled to them fresh from the gallows, and a lot of murderers find new purpose on the tables of the official institutions. They aren't the only ghouls in London though, and this is where Clint comes in.  
  
He used to run errands for whoever would pay him and never think of dead bodies (except for one with yellow hair falling around the nape of his twisted neck, tiny in death), until one day he finds an old man curled around a bottle in an alley, skin grey and stiff. Dipping into his fingers into the soft-lined pockets of his jacket get him a few pennies, and he's just wrestling the boots off when two men barge around the corner, arguing. They stop short when they see Clint, and the short one puts up his hands defensively, palms out.  
"You collecting, or just inheriting?"  
Clint isn't sure what he means by collecting, but he nods anyway. He has a knife; it's a small one, just the right size for throwing. He could have it buried in the eyesocket of the tall man before either of them get two steps.  
They give him lazy, easy grins. "If you've not got a client in mind, Schmidt is looking," the short one says, slinging the trailing end of his woolen scarf over his shoulder. "Peartree street, up by the workhouses. He pays well."  
Clint thanks him, levers the stiff corpse into his wheelbarrow and covers it with empty coal sacks. Peartree Street isn't too far, not if someone is paying well.  
  
His inherited boots pinch a little on the walk, but they're sturdy and warm, and a few hours later, Clint has a pocket full of coins and a new job.  
  
  
  
There are plenty of dead bodies in London, if you know what to look for. A weeping wife in a doorway, a worried landlord sweeping window glass off the cobbles in front of his pub, dockmen gathered solemnly under the cranes, a tiny shadow with limp white hands slumped in a disused doorway. Clint's spent his life watching people, and soon he knows every back-alley surgeon in London.  
  
Pym takes whatever he has, even if it's mangled or has - once - been fished out of the Thames. He stinks of blood and tallow, ill-shaven and unpleasant, and barely pays what they bodies are worth, unlike Reed, who wears clean shirtsleeves under a dirty apron and is generous with his coins if the body is young. Stark is the best, it's always a good day when he falls into step beside Clint out of nowhere; he's rich and well known, so Clint gets paid for silence as well as the corpse, and Stark's butler gives him food  and lets him sit in the big clean kitchen to eat it (and pretends not to see the apples vanish from the fruit bowl into Clint's pockets). Unfortunately his sporadic visits soon taper off completely and Reed mentions something about him working with clockwork automatons and guns with their triggers on lengths of invisible string, so clearly he's gone mad. It's a blow to business (Clint misses the warm kitchen more than the money), but it's not as bad as what happens soon after.  
  
Reed gets sloppy with the body disposal, he gets caught dumping a mangled body in the Thames, someone mentions a young man with long blond hair, a wheelbarrow and a dirty face, and Clint has to lie his way through some very insistent questions and then lay low for most of the winter. He sticks to delivering coal, stealing food and sleeping in the shipyard sheds, out of the snow and wind. It's strange to peel the gloves off a dead tramp and leave the body, easy money lying out for the rats, but eventually he gets used to it.  
  
Just before spring begins he cuts his hair short and starts doing collections for Pym, who becomes slightly less miserly now that he's the top dog in town, with Reed still in jail and all the other ghouls barely more than children. The collections have to be done at night now, or in the early grey of dawn. Maybe they're not looking for him still, but he can't help hunching into his collar. No one ever gave a wheelbarrow full of lumpy sacking a second glance before, but now every first glance makes his skin crawl and he's more careful about where he sleeps.  
  
Pickings slim down as they move into summer, fewer frozen bodies and fewer lingering illnesses means less money, and Clint goes back to delivering coal and tallow most days of the week, eyes always open.  
  
  
  
He meets Dr Bruce Banner one warm evening, shortly before sunset under Blackfriars Bridge when he is trying to lift a plump dead man with one missing arm over his skinny shoulder, bare feet slipping in the wet weeds and silt. Clint watches him from his vantage point on someone's roof for a while before curiosity overwhelms him (if he's trying to get rid of a body, why doesn't he roll it, if it's a friend, why not call for help?) and he scrambles down to get a closer look, keeping close to the back walls of the houses and crooked wooden fences. He's being quiet, but one minute the small figure ankle deep in mud is grappling with the heavy, slippery body, and when he looks up from finding his own footing, the man is staring at him, round glasses glinting like owl eyes in the shadows.  
  
Clint keeps moving towards him, carefully casual, but lets one hand slip to the handle of his knife under his shirt, leather sheath safe against the skin of his hipbone. He wouldn't even need it.  
"Are you collecting?" he says when they're close enough to talk quietly, and the man frowns.  
"I'm a doctor," he replies, like this should be obvious. He's sharp-faced and long-haired, eyes level with Clint's collarbone, older than he looked from far away. "Collecting what?"  
"Never mind," Clint mutters, and when the doctor kneels in the mud and drags uselessly at the body again it's just so pathetic that he has to bend down and help him. "I usually charge for this," he says in response to the grateful smile, but it doesn't go away, just quirks at one corner.  
"I'm sure I can manage something," he says.  
  
Clint leaves him and the body lurking behind a pile of empty crates at the end of the nearest dock while he goes to retrieve his wheelbarrow from where he hid it. When he trundles back, the little doctor is kneeling over the body with his left hand curled around a tiny blank book, scratching marks on the paper with a stub of black lead. He gives a small start when Clint dumps an armload of coal sacks next to him, but helpfully holds the handles steady until the body is folded out of sight under burlap.  
"I'm Bruce Banner," he says, extending one long-fingered hand.  
They shake, "Clint Barton."  
  
It's a long walk from the docks to where Bruce lives, a whitewashed door that's seen better days, no number, no slot for letters, tucked at the end of an unnamed alleyway near the tanning yard on Union Street. There's one window and another door at the other end of the long room, a large table - but only one chair - in the middle and a tiny coal stove tucked next to an alcove that contains a messy pile of blankets. Books are piled neatly on a raw wood chest, and glass bottles lined up the crossbeams. Clint recognizes some of the medical instruments from Pym's lab (not that he knows what they're for, except for the saw, he can guess that one) and it's reassuring somehow. Only a real doctor would have such an extensive collection of strange metal implements, this isn't some creep who steals bodies for nefarious purposes and profit (like Clint).  
  
Bruce motions for him to put the body on the table and scuttles over to a collection of boxes and bottles, leaving Clint to look around while he rummages.  
  
There are meticulous diagrams of abstract shapes in ink and charcoal pinned to the walls, and Clint is staring at one, wishing he could read the tiny letters, when a shape catches his eye and he realizes it's a human hand, folded open like a flower, every layer visible. Muscles, bones, veins, skin, documented on yellowing paper. It's quite wonderful, and not ghoulish at all. He moves to the next, and the next.  
"It's an eye," Bruce says behind him, and Clint jumps. "A human eye next to a cat's eye."  
It doesn't look much like an eye, but Clint nods anyway, because he's never seen anything like it and doesn't want to look away until he's seen all of them. Bruce is giving him a funny little smile, shy with a flash of teeth, while his long clever fingers turn the coins over and over in his palm. He should take them and go, but the next page draws his eye and he doesn't reach for the money.  
  
It looks like a tree growing from each side of a stone, held inside a stone, twisted branches fine and complex, neither side quite a mirror of the other. He can't think what it could possibly be, nothing made of meat and blood should need such thin, precise lines to describe it, nothing with that capacity for detail could possibly exist inside a human. Narrow hatching greys the layered branches, the outer wall of the stone is honeycombed, writing he can't read perches on the ends of arrows and taunts him. He's never given much thought to what the ghouls do with the bodies he trades for coin, never felt even a twinge of curiosity over Reed's specimens in jars or the split open cadavers on Pym's table, but now he _yearns_ to put a name to each part. It's a new feeling, he thought he knew everything he'd ever care to.  
"That's a pair of lungs," Bruce says. He's standing closer, shoulder brushing Clint's upper arm as he traces out along the branches with a fingertip. "The bronchioles carry air into the lungs," he pauses for a moment, then taps the area in the middle. "The blood is infused with oxygen and then pumped around the body."  
Emboldened, Clint points to the stone (wrapped in the roots of the tree) in the middle. "What's that?"  
Bruce turns and smiles up at him with sharp white teeth as he taps Clint's chest, right where his ribs meet in the middle. "Your heart."  
  
Clint stumbles out the door slightly dazed, warm coins clutched in his pocket, and spends the rest of the night sitting on the steps of St Paul's, thinking about breathing and watching the veins on the backs of his hands. His own pulse rings louder in his ears than the distant strikes of midnight and the memory of thin fingers taps his sternum like a ghost.  
  
  
  
Later in the week as he's pushing a barrow load of coal down the street, he finds a dead robin in the gutter, bones intact, still limp and almost warm. Thinking of the cat's eye, he picks it up and slips it into his coat pocket, and it isn't until evening when he's standing outside Bruce's splintering whitewashed door that he realizes how stupid it is, but when he turns away he runs straight into someone and almost knocks them down. They grab at each other, and then "Clint?" they say, and it's Bruce and he wants to sink into the cobbles and disappear. Bruce's hand is fisted around the lapels of Clint's coat and one of Clint's hands is gripping his upper arm. He smells of smoke and his eyes are hazel rimmed with green.  
"Uh," Clint says, free hand diving into his pocket to bring out the robin, which he practically shoves in Bruce's face. "I saw this and thought of you."  
  
Instead of recoiling in horror, his eyes light up with honest delight and he nudges the tiny body with one fingertip, unfolding one of the wings.  
"It's beautiful, thank you," he breathes, and just as Clint is muttering _I found it in the gutter, it was nothing_ , he says "would you like to come in?"  
  
Bruce takes the bird from his hand and lays it out carefully on a corner of the table, wings spread, then trots over to rummage in a crate in the furthest corner. Clint drifts back to the wall of drawings, back to the heart and lungs, until there's a faint cough and he turns to see the other man juggling a handful of small apples and half a loaf of bread, looking fond and amused and all too familiar.  
  
After they eat, sitting on the floor because there's only one chair at the table, he produces a plain green bottle and hands it to Clint.  
"Ether?"  
Clint shrugs and drinks, and the rest of the night passes in a happy haze, mostly he examines the drawings (a frog, a rat, abstract smudges Bruce tells him are tendons holding muscle to bone, crooked streetmaps of veins and a sketch of a live pigeon pecking crumbs) but eventually ends up lying on his stomach on the table, watching the strokes of the pen as it scratches the robin onto paper.  
"You're brilliant," he slurs, reaching out to touch it. Bruce swipes his fingers away and ruffles Clint's uneven hair, carefully setting the drawing aside to dry before bringing out the ether bottle again.  
  
Clint wakes up the next morning sprawled on the straw-stuffed mattress (no memory of getting there), warm but alone. Bruce is gone and there's an apple sitting on the table next to Clint's folded coat. so presumably he doesn't expect to be back anytime soon and doesn't want to find him there when he does. One his way out the door, he takes a final wander past the drawings, feet leading him to the empty spot where the heart and lungs no longer hangs, and the bare wall twists something in his chest. He leaves feeling hollow and disappointed and not knowing why. The apple is no help at all.  
  
After throwing the last shred of core into someone's open coal chute, Clint crams his hands in his coat pockets, intending to stomp down to the river to sulk, but the crinkle of six-folded paper stops him and he spends the day sitting on a roof instead, staring at the stone in the middle of tangled blood-carrying branches and thinking about quick fingers curled gently around a needle-sharp metal pen.  
  
  
  
Four days later, Monday, a bat rotted almost down to its skeleton is the perfect excuse to stop by again. Bruce doesn't mention the drawing, Clint doesn't ask, just says _thank you_ over and over in his head until the words don't sound real any more.  
  
On Thursday, he finds a dead snake in a coal chute, just the right size to coil neatly in his pocket. Bruce is fascinated by the jaw and spends most of the evening manipulating it while Clint lies on his bed in his shirtsleeves and watches the narrow lines of his back through a comfortable fog of ether, pretending he'll never have to leave.  
  
Friday, he steals an orange from a fruit stall and they share it sitting side by side on the table. Bruce is telling him all about the amputation he assisted with at Dr Pym's and Clint is nodding and watching him lick orange juice off his fingers, when everything goes quiet. They're staring at each other and Clint has no idea if he's supposed to answer something because he's been absorbed in the flicks of his tongue.  
  
Bruce lifts a hand to Clint's face, sticky fingers curling lightly under his jaw as his thumb swipes the corner of his mouth, dragging a little on his bottom lip (salt and oranges) before coming to rest on his chin.  
  
Someone pounds on the door and they both jump, Bruce flings himself across the room and then the moment is completely over and gone forever as a burly crying man with a teenage girl in his arms staggers in, more children flitting behind him like shadows. She was kicked in the side by a horse, the man explains between gasps as Bruce flicks a greying cloth over the wood table, she's his eldest, his little girl, so grown up since her mother died but only fifteen, too young to follow.  When the patient is settled, Bruce takes his arm and guides him to the chair at the head of the table. The littler children hover at her feet, watching intently as Bruce scrubs his hands over a bucket of soap and water.  
"I can't afford-" her father says, wringing his huge hands in the hem of his shirt, but Bruce holds up a hand and shakes his head.  
"Clint," he says, "come here," and that's how Clint finds himself, protests ignored, on the opposite side of the table with clean scrubbed hands, holding the gas lamp at an angle with one hand and a clump of rags with the other, sopping the blood out of the open wound whenever he's told to. One of her ribs has cracked and is poking into her lungs, Bruce tells them all calmly. Her father's knuckles are white around the chloroform bottle, but he nods and stares at his daughter's face in silence, rather than the hole being cut in her back. One of the littlest children is leaning against Clint's leg and it all feels like a fever dream, right down to the sharp smell of copper and the blood drying the rags to the sweat sticky skin of his palm. Their trust is terrifying, but Bruce's confidence in him is somehow worse; he can't bear to see the disappointment that will appear any minute.  
  
"Clint," Bruce murmurs. He's pulled the rib back into place (as far as Clint can tell) and her breathing has eased, but he doesn't seem to be getting ready to sew her up yet. "There's a splinter, I can't see it."  
"But I-"  
Bruce cuts him off. "It's a small piece of bone," he says, taking the lantern and handing Clint the long tweezers, "can you see it?"  
  
Peering into the wound, he can't see lungs or a heart or anything else he thought he might be able to, there's disappointingly nothing that resembles the careful drawings, no black ink lines or empty spaces, but he can see a tiny glint of white.  
"There," he says, pointing with the narrow metal prongs, and Bruce nods his hand down, tilting the lantern closer. For a few horrible seconds before the tweezers lower in, he thinks _I don't know what I'm doing, I'm not a surgeon, I'm going to kill her_ , but then they're in, closing around the sliver of white bone floating in red, and Clint can breathe again.  
"Sharp eyes," Bruce says quietly, maybe only to himself. "Hawk eyes."  
  
  
  
He takes the girl (half awake, wrapped in her father's coat) home in his wheelbarrow, younger siblings skipping gleefully beside him. Bruce gave her father a list of instructions - verbally, of course - and Clint can see him repeating them to himself in his head, determined not to forget one (wouldn't it be useful if he could read). Bruce has mostly tidied up by the time he gets back and is sitting on the floor in only his trousers, bucket between his crossed legs, scrubbing his arms all the way up to his shoulders. He holds out a spare strip of cloth and Clint sits down beside him and tries to concentrate on scraping dry blood out of the lines of his palms instead of the angles of Bruce's hip and collar bones. He is only partly successful.  
  
Bruce eventually drifts to the table, trousers hanging low on his narrow hips, sets up his ink bottle and papers and sinks into intent silence, drawing something under a magnifying glass. Clint assumes this is his cue to leave, but when he's buttoning his coat, he feels the weight of eyes on the back of his neck.  
"Going home?" Bruce asks, cocking his head. There's already a smear of ink under his bottom lip.  
"Yeah," Clint says, because it's not really a lie. London's outdoors has been his home almost all his life.  
"You don't," Bruce starts, chewing on his bottom lip, "I mean, you could," he tries again, and looks so lost and can't seem to finish, so Clint just nods, dry-mouthed, and shrugs out of his coat. Anticipation trips his hands over the buttons and wrings his chest into knots and he doesn't even know why. It's a huge anti-climax anyway; he toes off his boots and falls down in the mess of blankets, turning over the afternoon's hand-to-mouth incident in his head and staring at the naked curve of spine, but falls asleep before he can form any kind of coherent conclusion. He dreams of blood, but it's not awful, it's quiet and warm and he can see it moving under his own skin and someone (dark hair, spectacles and ink blacked hands) traces the lines of veins up over his stomach until they disappear under his ribs.  
  
In the morning Bruce is gone and the only proof he didn't dream last night are spots of blood on his boots and inky smudges up his sides. Clint retreats to the other side of the river and ignores (never stops thinking about) the drawing crinkling in his pocket.  
  
  
  
A few days later (equilibrium regained, ink transfered from skin to clothing) he stops by again, this time with a fresher dead bat, leathery wings tucked around itself and cat-sized puncture holes in its neck. Bruce is delighted, he's been carefully peeling the skeleton free of flesh and (apparently they are the same species of bat) having a whole specimen to compare with will be wonderful. Clint isn't exactly sure what is wonderful about a dead bat, but Bruce is happy to sit and draw it, he's happy to perch on the table next to him and watch (sometimes the pen, sometimes the back of his neck or tendons in his wrist).  
  
"Why do you draw so many animals?" he asks after a while. "You don't operate on them, do you?"  
"Human bodies are hard to get," Bruce shrugs, using the clean end of the pen to nudge one of the bat's wings over slightly, "mostly I've assisted Dr Pym, he has a steady supply."  
Clint knows this; he is the steady supplier. "Why not join one of the colleges?"  
"I was rejected," he says shortly, mouth tight, and Clint swallows a ripple of fury because Bruce is brilliant and gifted and kind enough to feed strange men who bring him dead birds, kind enough to give away the most wonderful drawing on his wall.  
"You're better than those ghouls anyway," he assures him, and resolves to do something about this at the first opportunity.  
  
  
  
The first opportunity takes over a week to arrive. There's a fight in an alley one rainy night and Clint's fortunate enough to be passing just in time to hear the wet smack of a skull against stone. The other participant hovers guiltily for a few seconds before realizing he's been observed and taking off in the other direction. Blood seeps outwards through the puddles and drips down Clint's shirt, but he gets the body settled under coal sacks in his wheelbarrow without anyone seeing him (he's fairly sure) and begins the slow walk south down empty streets with a flutter of excitement in his chest.  
  
"I saw this and thought of you," Clint says when the door opens, giving Bruce his best winning smile, ignoring the water that runs off the ends of his hair and into his mouth.  
Bruce looks stunned, stooped in his doorway with his freckled arms hanging out of his cut-off shirtsleeves and dark smudges of ink up over his jaw and around his mouth. Clint is momentarily distracted by the thought that he chews his pens and brushes.  
"Is that..."  
"Fresh today," he replies, shifting the heavy barrow handles from one hand to the other. "Hadn't seen you for a while."  
"I can't afford to pay you," Bruce says, staring at the lump under the dripping sacking. "I really can't."  
Clint hasn't even thought this far ahead. He had assumed that surgeons bought bodies as often as they needed them - there were a lot of parts, it probably took a few weeks just to remove them all - and the rest of the time, they had live people.  
"Maybe Pym would be interested," Bruce says wistfully.  
Clint doesn't like Pym; Pym gives him blood-tacky handshakes and a subtle feeling of unease and the walls of his dark cellar surgery are bare dirty stone, he didn't lug a body three miles in the rain to let _Pym_ have it. "Maybe we could make a deal," he offers, and Bruce cocks his head.  
"What did you have in mind?"  
It's the stupidest and most useless thing he's ever wanted, but the words fall out before he can bite them back. "Can you teach me to read?"  
"Of course," he says, and Clint flushes at the sheer delight on his face.  
  
  
  
Together they get the body out of the rain and onto the table, Bruce lays out the sheet and begins collecting metal instruments while Clint thinks about taking off his coat and boots (does he really want to see a body cut open?) and settling down by the stove to dry his clothing. He desperately wants to make sure the drawing is still safe and dry in the inside pocket, but his hands are soaking wet.  
"Clint," Bruce says behind him, and something in his voice trips the alarms in Clint's head. He turns around. Bruce is leaning over the body with one hand on its neck, but staring over his own shoulder, eyes wide. "Clint, I don't think-"  
  
The body sits up and swings its fist into Bruce's face, sending him staggering backwards, and makes a stumbling but brisk attempt for the door.  
  
Clint is quicker (he'll kill him, he'll kill him for this), catching the apparently not dead man around the waist from behind, throwing his full weight against his back and kicking at his knees so he has no option but to crash face first into the floorboards. They roll back and forth for a bit, Clint trying to get a clear swing at his face without letting him get a clear swing in return, until fingers dig into his shoulders and pull.  
"Stoppit!" Bruce yells, hauling him backwards with all his thin-limbed might. Instead of going down in an overbalanced tangle of arms and legs, Clint ends up sprawling across the floor and Bruce, somehow, steps between them, feet braced wide apart and hands palm out, conciliatory but fierce. The dead man (he's barely older than Clint, young and terrified) peers through his hands. Blood has started trickling down his face again, threading through the water running out of his hair.  
  
"Clint," Bruce says, keeping his back to him. "Help me get him on the table so I can sew up his head."  
He takes a step towards the dead man, who cocks his head, confused, but doesn't run. Clint pushes himself to his feet. "But-"  
"Get him on the table," Bruce repeats, and finally  turns around. They'd be chest to chest (almost touching, toe to toe) if he wasn't so much shorter, his face is unreadable and something heavy settles in the pit of Clint's stomach and he opens his mouth - to apologize, to protest, to disagree, plead for forgiveness because he didn't mean it to happen, he really didn't - but snaps it shut again when Bruce shakes his head.  
  
His eyes flash green in the lamp light. Clint decides it'd be a bad idea to disagree.  
  
  
Bruce puts five stitches in the man's forehead, top teeth digging into his lip the whole time, and sends him on his way. He won't look at Clint, who hovers at the other end of the table twisting his hands in his sodden shirt, trying to catch his eye and hoping there is some facial expression that can convey how sorry he is and make Bruce forgive him for bringing him a corpse that woke up and punched him.  
  
After closing the door behind him, Bruce bursts out laughing, real, whole body laughter that has him leaning sideways against the wall, eyes squinting shut and one hand tangled in his own hair. Clint can't see what's so funny about anything and he wasn't even the one who got his eye blacked for no reason, there is nothing funny about this.  
"I'm sorry," he says wretchedly for about the tenth time, but it's waved away.  
"How did you not notice that he was alive?"  
"How are you supposed to tell?" Clint snaps, feeling somewhat slighted and also offended.  
Bruce wheezes a little and buries his face in his hands, then jerks back, palm hovering around his left eye. Clint hunches beside him and pulls his wrists down, away from his eyes so he can see that he's okay, he needs to see, and before he can help himself he reaches up to touch the darker knuckle imprints (deep red, turning purple) high on his cheekbone. He leans into it and Clint almost jerks away in surprise.  
"Your hands are nice and cold," he murmurs, pressing his own hand to the back of Clint's, holding it in place against his hot skin. He's still smiling, using the side of his face that isn't slowly darkening into a bruise and the result is lopsided and toothy and strangely appealing. "Very nice.  
  
Eventually, Bruce straightens up (not quite chest to chest, much smaller now than he seemed before) but doesn't step away, just stands there, too close and still holding Clint's hand against his own cheek, staring at him with that half a smile.  
  
When Clint doesn't move, he leans forward and rests his forehead just below his collar. His hands move to perch on his waist and he breathes deeply, in and out, over and over. It doesn't seem like he was laughing _at_ Clint, not after the way he looked at him when he touched his mottling face and how his fingertips are stroking up and down his ribs through his wet shirt now. "How was I supposed to know," he mumbles, looking away (even though he can't see his face from that angle). He's gone red, he knows it, bright bright red.  
"I thought finding dead bodies was your job," Bruce says into his shirt, and reaches up to turn Clint's hand over so the back is now pressing into his cheek (thumb almost touching the edge of his lower lip). "Isn't it?"  
"I'll have you know I also deliver coal," Clint replies in his best Tony Stark voice with as much dignity as he can manage (mouth twitches by his thumb, he did something right) and a smile of his own pulling at the edges of his mouth. Bruce huffs a little, fingers tapping on his sides.  
  
"Would you like to learn how," he says after a while, looking up, "how to tell, I mean, if someone's dead?"  
"I'm not a doctor," Clint starts doubtfully (he can't resist those bright eyes, why would he even want to try) but Bruce grabs his fingers and arranges two of them - the first two - against the skin under his stubble-scratchy jaw, almost under his ear.  
"It's easy," he says, "do you feel that?"  
Clint can.  
  
When Clint has confidently declared Bruce and himself alive, and the chair, stove and table dead, Bruce pulls out a sheaf of tatty old paper and a handful of smudgy burnt-black sticks.  
"Would you still like to learn to read?" He offers shyly, teeth scraping over his lower lip.  
Clint tries not to stare and nods so hard his head spins.  
  
They spend hours on it, Clint perched on the chair and Bruce hovering behind him, bending his fingers around the charcoal and breathing on his neck, strands of hair tickling his jaw. Things are starting to make a little sense (he has drawn several crooked alphabets in letters of varying sizes) when Bruce says "that's enough for now" and produces the bottle of ether.  
  
  
  
Clint's curled on his side on the table in his damp trousers, suspenders over his bare chest, watching Bruce write. The half empty ether bottle is behind his head and the gas lamp is radiating heat against his bare stomach, he can see the flame flicker the shadows in slow motion around the pen tip as the letters fall out. He recognizes some of them now, maybe more because he's drunk, he's so drunk it's all fucking wonderful and his doctor has freckles on his nose and down his neck and huffs ether fumes out of a cupped hand because he doesn't like the taste. Clint swigs out of the bottle (but he's done for now, Bruce told him not to drink too much, just a little, just enough) and, feeling daring, slides one fingertip in the path of the pen, careful not to touch any of the wet ink.  
  
Instead of flicking it out of his way, Bruce twists left and scratches the line of letters up the side of Clint's finger, gently dotting the end just below his knuckle, and continuing up the soft hollow between his index finger and thumb until the ink thins to nothing. Clint jerks involuntarily when the pen is taken away, but Bruce just dips it in the inkwell and continues (like nothing happened) around to the inside of his wrist. The nerves spark and warmth settles in his chest, too hot even though goosebumps rise on his bare skin and he can't stop shivering. Without thinking he rubs the side of his head against the tabletop to stop the itchy prickling of his scalp, but it doesn't help, his knees just pull reflexively towards his chest and he shudders again. Bruce isn't writing any more, no more tiny close letters, he's drawing something in stuttering bowed-inwards lines, leaving tiny spaces here and there, working from wrist to elbow and never pressing hard enough to (hurt) cut through the layers of ether wrapped around Clint's brain like fog.  
  
He can hear his own blood moving in his veins (under the new ones, drawn in black, a map) and the thump of his pulse in his neck, uneven, stuttering in time to the smooth short strokes of ink that hatch around the edges of his wrist, moving slowly up until Bruce has to stand to reach, leaning over to huff hot breath against the inside of Clint's arm so he can tilt his hand and work from another angle, cold against the lines of wet ink.  
  
When he can't lean any further, Bruce clambers up onto the tabletop and nudges him onto his back, settling himself and his ink bottle against his side, left arm braced on Clint's chest (the pads of his fingers drag when his hand twitches) and legs sprawling. He's so intent, hunched around his drawing with his hair hanging around his face so all Clint can see is the tip of his nose and his jaw where it curves up to meet his ear. He can't see his eyes, just the arm of his spectacles where it sticks out through his hair, can't see if he's biting his lip or his mouth is slightly open, he can't see anything so he reaches up and brushes the hair away.  
  
Bruce kisses his wrist (dry lipped and soft) as it passes near his mouth, and when Clint tucks his trailing hair behind his ear, he can see a smile pushing at the curve of his cheek and the fingertips rub deliberately now, up and down his sternum like a game.  
  
A moth flutters around the lamp, tiny wings beating loud against the glass. The pen scratches lightly across his shoulder and curves down to his chest. Clint's abdominal muscles tense and his hips twitch. There's no way Bruce doesn't notice this (Clint's fingertips dig into his leg, his inner thigh, just above the knee), but he just keeps drawing sweeping lines, mapping out something that is mostly loops and twists with loose, scraping strokes, left hand splayed casually on Clint's stomach, pinning him down without weighing anything at all.  
  
When he switches to a brush to fill in the larger areas of dark, he also slings a leg across Clint and curls down over him, hunched intently around the handle held tight in his long crooked fingers as he works impossibly tiny detail around thin, precise lines. Clint holds his breath for as long as he can then breathes as shallowly as possible, trying to stay still.  
  
Bruce switches back to the pen, then the brush. He doesn't seem to notice Clint for a while, just rubs his knuckles absently over his stomach and once they drag almost down to the buttons on his trousers, but he doesn't seem to notice, just keeps scratching tiny lines moving outwards.  
  
Clint drifts off, just for a little while, but Bruce shuffles down, skinny legs press his hips into the tabletop and he sits on Clint's upper thighs, every time he leans forward (breath on his skin) to closer watch the tip of his pen they almost rub against each other, never quite.  
  
Clint's drunk enough not to care any more, arching up as much as he can when the wet brush touches his skin and running his hands as high up Bruce's legs as he dares to, thumbing the ridges of muscle and bone through his worn brown trousers. He wants to touch him but isn't sure if that's allowed, kiss him hard on the mouth and grab his hair, press as much of their skin together as he can manage. His hands slip up further, fingers hooking into the waistband and tugging gently, just down a bit, they're so close together already.  
  
Bruce looks up.  
  
He puts down the brush.  
  
After undoing the buttons, he slips his arms out of his shirt and tugs it free from under his suspenders. Clint is fucking terrified but also this is exactly what he wanted, it's the best thing ever, Bruce's two bottom ribs are crooked (once broken, never re-set), sticking out unevenly against the heels of Clint's hands, his breathing is heavier than before, almost panting and their teeth click when they kiss but it's still fantastic. Bruce licks his tongue and Clint can feel him grinning against his mouth when his hand slips down between them.  
  
They only stay like that for a little while (Clint has just worked up the nerve to reach for the button on his trousers) before Bruce mumbles something into his mouth and hops nimbly off the table, surprisingly steady. The room spins when Clint sits up and it takes him a few confused seconds before he sees where he's supposed to be going, and _oh, of course_ , the bed in the alcove, but he makes it off the table and they crash down into the tangle of blankets, Bruce twisting under him, pushing up until the metal clips on his suspenders scrape Clint's chest.  
  
Clint has no idea what to do, just balances himself up over him on his forearms and grips the sheet in his fingers, kissing him (that's safe, he knows how to do that, maybe) and hoping he isn't doing anything wrong, but he starts shivering (slowly) and can't stop, and eventually Bruce notices and pushes him off, propping himself up on one elbow to stare at Clint in the half-dark.  
"Are you sure?" he says quietly, which is a ridiculous question because Clint has never wanted anything more in his life (hands and skin and loud breathing in the quiet), but the only answer he can give is leaning forward and kissing him again because his mouth won't seem to fit around the word yes.  
  
Bruce doesn't press him for answers and doesn't pull away.  
  
  
  
In the morning they're both covered in smeared ink and the bruising around Bruce's eye has deepened to a dark purple, yellow on the edges. It's still dark, so Clint thinks _fuck it_ and lets himself drift back into sleep.  
  
When he wakes up again, it's lighter, just after dawn. The arm is gone from across his stomach (no sticky palm resting on his chest) and the covers are neatly pulled up around him. Bruce is gone. He's not anywhere in the little room; he's left Clint again.  
  
Clint's face burns and for a minute it's so overwhelming (he's never been that naked in front of anyone before, he couldn't stop trembling, Bruce left him to wake up alone, he didn't know what to do with his hands, the stupid high breathy sound he made when Bruce bit his shoulder, the laws he broke and will now hang for, the corpse wasn't dead, _he thought it would be different this time_ ) that he isn't even sure what he should actually be ashamed of first, or even most. He deliberately doesn't think about what happened in the dark (hands and mouths) as he pulls his clothing over the smudged inky drawings and slips out the door.  
  
  
  
Two days later, Pym is in a good mood. Clint has only stopped by to see if he had anything left over, an excess body that he could barter for something (a free delivery, a free disposal, even though he doesn't do them usually, as a rule) or, well, anything. He's not going to fail again.  
"These two are real professionals," Pym sighs, smoothing his apron, brown with old blood. "In and out, can turn over a grave and have it filled again in an hour and a half."  
  
Hank Pym looks like he has just read a line of beautiful poetry, or drank a particularly fine wine. His eyes have the glazed cheer of someone whose problems have all been solved. It's unsettling.  
  
"They take bodies from graves?" Clint asks doubtfully. "Don't people see?"  
"They do it at night," he replies, "keep an eye on the local churchyards, informants all over the city. Wonderful system, very efficient."  
"Are the bodies still useable?" Not that he wants to know, really, but the idea has merit. Someone who's being lowered into the ground isn't going to swing up and punch the surgeon, and there are graves everywhere, funerals every day. "I mean, are they too...dead?"  
Pym laughs unpleasantly, like he knows a secret. "They're _never_ too dead."  
Clint leaves, empty handed and feeling slightly sick.  
  
  
  
It's getting dark when he makes it out to the other side of the river. He hasn't seen Bruce for almost a week now, the longest since they met at dusk under Blackfriars Bridge, ankle deep in mud. He's almost seen him every day, creeping over rooftops to peer into the familiar little alleyway, but he never gets up the nerve to clamber down because every time he thinks about him, his skin prickles and his throat goes tight and he doesn't know what he'll say or do, or what he's even allowed to do. They weren't allowed to do what they did (skin to skin, rubbing against each other in a mess of blankets, Bruce whining into the crook of Clint's neck) but they did it, and afterwards, nothing changed. No one looked at him differently in the street or said anything; nothing has changed at all except he wants things he can't name more than everything he could, and that longing pulls him down familiar streets to a battered white door.  
  
Bruce is quieter that evening, edgy and withdrawn, but that's all right because Clint doesn't exactly know what to say either, how far it's okay to reach. He's a little bit hopeful though, he caught Bruce almost smiling at him when he stretched out on top of the blankets in the alcove. Conversation is nonexistent (if he didn't want him there, wouldn't he just say so?), but maybe that's how things work. He has no idea.  
  
Still, there are worse things to do with silence (wary silence, not angry, Clint decides after about an hour) than watch Bruce Banner work. Maybe things will be okay.  
  
  
Clint wakes up alone a few hours before dawn, comfortable but cold. The candle is guttering low (he should try and steal some, easier to pocket than lamp oil) and Bruce is slumped on his folded arms, pen clutched in his right hand still.  
  
He never even tried to go to bed. He never intended to join Clint, he never wanted him (never sober and clear headed), of course he left every morning so he never had to see him.  
  
It hurts like a physical blow inside his chest and guilt pulls his shoulders low. He wasn't welcome, he was never welcome, he brought him a live corpse and useless dead animals and took his most beautiful drawing to keep in his pocket. He wriggles into his coat and boots as fast as possible, carefully not looking at Bruce, but when his laces are tied and buttons buttoned, his legs refuse to co-operate and he ends up staring anyway, inching closer.  
  
The ink has bled up the nib and over his fingers, following the whorls of his skin like tiny parallel veins. Clint smoothes the drawing flat and weights it under the ink bottle after carefully twisting the cap back on. It's the best apology he can think of, poor though it is. After blowing out the candle, he leans down again and, before he can talk himself out of it, kisses him quickly on the cheek, one last time, for goodbye, for luck.  
  
Bruce makes a soft noise in his throat and shifts on his folded arms, eyelids fluttering suddenly.  
  
Clint runs.  
  
Out the door, down the narrow alley and into the street, past the tannery and the churchyard and all the way across Blackfriars Bridge to where he keeps his wheelbarrow sometimes, in the silty foundations of a disused building that hangs out over the Thames on crooked wooden legs. Hunched panting in the cracks of light that fall through the buckled floor above him, blood roaring in his ears, he has a perfect idea.  
  
  
It can't fail. He just has to find a funeral.  
  
  
  
There was a funeral this morning (four days later), which means that tonight, Clint can go see Bruce. This time, he won't disappoint him, even though _wrong wrong this is wrong_ beats in the back of his head like a hammer. It's not the same as removing an unwanted body from an alley or a workhouse, this person had family who chose where to lay their bones, somewhere to visit, to better hold onto the thought that they're not really gone. His fingers slip to his empty pocket off and on over the day, lost (Bruce is gone, not from the room at the end of the alley, but from Clint who he never wanted anyway) and he's loathe to take that from anyone else. Around dusk, shovel over his shoulder and barrow safely hidden, his legs take him to the churchyard on the other side of the river (Bruce's side of the river), the weight of the choice he has to make following him like a shadow, around his neck like an anchor.  
  
He can't do it.  
  
He has to do it.  
  
The tombstone says _beloved brother, father, husband and friend_ and Clint's never had any of them (any other than blond hair falling over a twisted neck, tiny in memory and death) but he can't bring himself to take them from someone else, even if they're already gone.  
  
He can't do it, but he doesn't have to give up hope yet.  
  
Except he doesn't end up having to make that choice. When he slinks into the churchyard in the small hours (it's raining lightly but steadily increasing) and picks his way between headstones, there's already a stooped shadow near the freshly turned plot, and when he gets close enough to see they're furiously shoveling loose earth away. There are two of them turning earth, and a third smashes him in the shoulder with a shovel before he can retreat. Another swing connects with his ear and everything goes grey for a few seconds. When his eyes refocus, he's on his hands and knees. There are people yelling and the shovel swings in again, in slow motion, towards his face.  
  
Clint rolls sideways, hand slipping under the hem of his trousers for his knife.  
  
The shovel misses.  
  
The knife doesn't.  
  
There's a scream off to his left, and more yelling, more footsteps out on the road. He legs it through the muddy graveyard, eyes half shut as it spins under his feet and rocks from side to side, tombstones flying at his shins but somehow all missing. The fence is low enough to jump, and even though the street tilts at the last second and he catches his foot on the railing, he manages to recover and trip out into the road, upright. The rain is so heavy now he can hardly see, he doesn't know which street he's on, where he stashed his wheelbarrow, he's lost his shovel and one of his ears is ringing, maybe bleeding.  
  
The shot hits him in the hip like a hammer and he staggers back.  
"Police," someone yells, and feet pound off into the gloom, leaving him alone on the empty street. A whistle blows and they yell again; "Police!"  
  
Clint runs.  
  
He can hear the slap of heavy boots on the street behind him, but the rain is thick and they can't have seen his face. He has a chance, and he repeats this as his own boots slip on the cobbles and he skids around the closest corner. He's near the tannery now, he can smell it. The docks, the easiest place to lose someone, are back the other way, on the other side of the little graveyard, and there's no chance he'll make it that far, not with the streets already beginning to blur and his sprint slowing to a stagger. He has to find somewhere to hide, but it's all sheer brick walls and shallow doorways, the pounding of his feet echoing in his throbbing head, hip and shoulder.  
  
Desperately, he flings himself around the next corner. It turns out to be a good decision; a few doors down, there's a short wooden staircase and a low porch just wide and high enough for him to roll under. Lying on his side in the muddy grit, he's fairly sure no one can see him, but he has a boot-level view of the street.  
  
The policemen splash past, round a corner and fade into the drumming of the rain.  
  
As his breathing evens, the pain swings up so fast that Clint can't even curl his knees to his chest, he just twitches pathetically and wheezes around chattering teeth. He can't stay here. Blood is running down his stomach and soaking into his shirt and trousers. He can't stay here. Rolling out from under the stairs is the worst thing he's ever done, then standing up is, and he can hardly even see but his feet take him to a doorway, bright white in the dark. Splinters dig into his hands as he slumps against it and everything goes a soothing shade of grey again.  
  
"Clint," someone says, "Clint, are you, oh god, what happened, Clint, wake up," they plead.  
He's lying on the floor, out of the rain, on his back, with someone's hands on his face. Everything hurts.  
"Clint," they say again, "I can't lift you, you need to get up, please, please get up."  
It's Bruce, cradling the back of his head with one hand and pulling his eyelids up, one by one, with the other.  
"Clint," he says, "you have to get up."  
Bruce runs his hand through Clint's hair and down the side of his face, fingers skipping around the aching spots and brushing away the trickles of water and blood that are running into his eyes and mouth. He keeps touching him lightly, on his neck and collarbone, under his bloody lower lip, almost frantic but all so gentle.  
"Please get up," he says again and his voice cracks on the last word and Clint _can't_ not at least try, just so he can reassure him that he's not dead and he's sorry and can he never make that choking, wavering sound again?  
  
Clint makes it to his elbows, Bruce hauls him up the rest of the way to sitting (the bullet hole burns and blood roars in his ears when the skin shifts) and out of his wet coat and shirt, muttering to him the whole time. Somehow, he makes it to the table. The lamp is too bright. It's cold. He can't stop shaking.  
  
Bruce measures some of the ether into an empty jar and crooks his arm under Clint's head, lifting him to drink, tilting the cup slowly so he doesn't choke. It burns but by the time Bruce lowers his head back to rest on his balled up shirt, he can't feel the pain of cut flesh, just the weight of the lead shot in his hip, so heavy it pins him to the table. There's a light hand on his ribs, the pulse in each fingertip throbs in time with the blood in Clint's veins and the needle pushing through the edges of his skin.  
  
He might have imagined a dry kiss against the corner of his mouth.  
  
  
  
A bare wooden ceiling drifts into focus above him when Clint forces his eyes open. He's indoors, it's daylight (through a scratched and dirty window), and all he's wearing is a pile of blankets. Bits of him hurt and there are fingers stroking through his hair.  
"So I finally found a way to make you stay for breakfast," Bruce says. He's sitting behind Clint's head somewhere, out of sight. "It's not ideal, having you shot, but it's nice to not have you run off when I go to get a bucket of water."  
He tries to say _what, what do you mean_ , but his mouth is dry and all that comes out is a croaky wheeze. There are shuffling noises behind him, and the blur of trousered knees in the corners of his peripheral vision.  
"Can you sit up?" Bruce asks.  
Apparently he cannot, but between them they manage half-upright and he ends up propped against Bruce's chest with a pointy chin resting on the top of his head and one arm clutching across his chest while he sips water from a jar. After he's had enough he slides down again, head resting against Bruce's stomach, arms pressed close by his bony legs. It's so comfortable (he's welcome, wanted) he may never move.  
  
"I'd have put you in the bed," Bruce says apologetically, leaning forward to peer down at him from above, "but we've already established I can't lift a body on my own."  
Smiling makes his face feel like it's going to split open and burn to ash, but the upside down grin he gets in return is worth it.  
  
Bruce helps him inch into a soft old pair of trousers that barely make it half down Clint's shins. He doesn't need a belt or braces to hold them up either, they sit (precariously low) on his hips.  
"Doesn't matter anyway," he tells him when they slip and he grabs for them. "You're going to be lying down."  
"How long?"  
"Until I say so," Bruce says, quirking a smile at him, then bravely takes most of Clint's dead weight and heaves him carefully into bed.  
  
Clint's out before he hits the mattress. The last thing he remembers are hands; one behind his head, one planted between his shoulder-blades, easing him down slowly.  
  
  
  
It's later in the afternoon next time he wakes up, Clint feels a lot better. Bruce is still stretched out beside him, fingers twining through his hair, twisting it into gentle curls and raking them out again. It's pleasant, soothing, the light scrape of fingernails over his scalp.  
"What happened, Clint?" his easy good humor from earlier is gone, he isn't wearing his glasses and he looks so much younger. "Who shot you?"  
He considers lying, but warm skin against his side undoes him (he could have this forever, or for a little while, which is longer than he's ever had anything) and he's tired of everything that isn't this, weary of holding everything close. "Some coppers shot me. They caught me in a churchyard."  
Bruce is silent. Clint knows he knows what Pym has been doing, but his hand still cards through Clint's hair and somehow it's the right thing to have said anyway.  
"I was, I wanted to make up for," he tries, rough but clear enough, "but I didn't, not just because of them, but I just couldn't. I wouldn't."  
"You don't have to make up for anything."  
"But, I-" Clint starts, and Bruce leans over and kisses him on the mouth.  
"You don't have to do anything, not for me, not for anyone," he tells Clint when they finally break apart. He's staring into Clint's eyes with intensity that would be frightening if it wasn't him, wasn't Bruce who knelt over him with pens and brushes and drew his veins and bones and organs on the outside of his skin, who looked at him and touched him and never hesitated.  
"But I want to, for you," he tells him, and Bruce just kisses him again and smiles like this is the best answer anyone has ever given him to anything. Maybe it is, Clint can't imagine what could be better.  
  
They both jump when someone pounds on the door.  
"Don't go anywhere," Bruce murmurs, pressing an absent-minded kiss to Clint's forehead (and no one has ever touched him so easily or with such care), giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze before levering himself out of the bed. "I'll be right back."  
  
It's the best thing he's ever heard; _I'll be right back, don't go anywhere, don't go, I'll be back_. Bruce wriggles into a shirt and smiles shyly when he catches him watching, and Clint remembers the smooth skin of his sides under his hands and _don't go anywhere, I'll be right back_ is the best promise anyone's ever made.  
  
The front door clicks shut. The voices outside are distant, and when Clint rolls onto his side to stretch, the drawing (his drawing) is pinned above the bed.  
  
  
Clint snaps awake (minutes, hours?) later to yelling outside. Someone bellows Dr Banner, control yourself and feet stamp on the cobbles. Something slams against the door. Ignoring his throbbing abdomen and spinning head, Clint hauls himself out of bed and stumbles along the wall, using the crossbeam as a rail. He intends to fling open the door and stomp out, but ends up slumping beside it, fingers scrabbling for the handle. He's glad he didn't, because when he eases the door open a crack, the unmistakable bold blue of copper uniforms stands out against the drab browns and greys of the alley and all Clint can think is _they found me, they remember me, they found me and I'm going to hang_. Dry mouthed and shivering (he's not wearing a shirt or shoes, it got cold all of a sudden), he leans back and inches the door open a little more. No one seems to notice, they're all staring at the source of the commotion.  
  
Bruce.  
  
"You shot my assistant!" he snarls. The big burly man whose daughter they fixed and another smaller man in spectacles and threadbare shirtsleeves are holding his skinny arms while Bruce kicks and struggles against them. His face is twisted and his eyes burn, teeth bared. "You fucking bastards shot him for no reason!"  
The policemen are looking nervous, eyes flicking to the open street on either side. "He was trespassing in a churchyard."  
"He was assaulted by grave robbers," Bruce spits. "You fucking idiots couldn't catch _them_!"  
"None of that now," the older copper growls, "he ran, we weren't to know he wasn't one of them."  
The spectacled man's hand slips on Bruce's arm and he twists away, lurching towards the policemen, fists balled and one already arcing back.  
  
The truncheon connects with his face, right across the jaw, before he gets two steps. There's a wet sounding crack, his head snaps sideways (spectacles smashing on the cobbles) and he hits the ground limply, shoulder first, cheek second. Clint flings open the door and stumbles out, pounding head and possible jail time be damned. He's going to fucking kill them (he's a coward for not stopping them sooner) and no one will stop him. His vision blurs, but he can still see them, smudges of blue against greys and browns, if he still had his knife the tall one wouldn't even get two steps.  
  
Hands catch his shoulders. The burly man has his upper arm encircled easily with one meatlocker fist, and the smaller man, the schoolteacher-or-clerk, hooks an arm around Clint's stomach, careful of the bandages on his hip. No amount of weak struggling helps.  
"See if he's all right," spectacles says. He has thinning hair and kind eyes in a serious face, but army captain authority layered in his voice. "See if Dr Banner is okay."  
  
One of his legs gives out a bit, but they don't seem to notice as they lower him down onto the cobblestones next to Bruce's small body and push forward like a wall, blocking the police from view. Clint shuffles forward on his knees and reaches for his limp hand, wrist twisted and fingers curling inwards like dead bird feet. His own fingers shake and he can't find a pulse in the wrist, but _sometimes it's easier to find a pulse in the neck, check under the jaw if you can_ echoes in his head and he manages to get his hands under Bruce's arms and heave him backwards (biting his lip when his stitches pull tight and tear) into his own lap.  
  
He checks his pulse, two fingers pressed gently under the jaw, and lowers his ear to Bruce's mouth. His breathing is shallow, but the warm air on Clint's cheek is unmistakable. There's a low gurgling sound too, his lips are bloody, but he's alive, his eyes twitch under closed lids, his thin chest heaves and Clint is so relieved (he will never ask for anything again) he could cry. Blood is soaking through his bandage into his borrowed trousers, which are much too short, his eyes won't focus properly and this is the happiest moment of his entire life except he can't kiss him.  
  
"That's assaulting an officer," one of the policemen whines (far away) and there's an ugly snarling sound, maybe from one person, maybe from everyone.  
"Attempted assault," the other copper amends quickly. They're looking around openly now, eyes darting side to side.  
  
A slight woman with red hair is leaning in the dark of a doorway, fingering the handle of a small, sharp hatchet. A muscular young man shifts an enormous mallet on his shoulder, and his friend looks no less intimidating with the lid of a barrel. Doors are beginning to open up and down the street.  
  
"A case of mistaken identity, clearly," one tries. The growl increases, like thunder from clouds too far away to see.  
  
No one looks happy, even the sky seems to have darkened.  
  
"So sorry to have caused any inconvenience," the other finishes, and they almost bolt, holding their dignity with measured steps until they're out of sight. People begin to melt back into their routines, doors creak closed and household tools resume their unassuming occupations. Clint holds Bruce as best he can and checks his pulse over and over, wiping dots of blood from his lips with his bare wrist but they appear again, over and over (something inside his head is broken, something Clint cannot reach to fix with cold hands), and there's nothing he can do to stop them.  
  
  
  
The big burly man, whose name turns out to be Walter, carries Bruce inside and lays him out on the table. Spectacles (Phil) pulls Clint to his feet and keeps slow step beside him, elbow cocked out casually, within easy reach just in case. Once they get inside, he realizes that everyone is looking at him, some timidly from the doorway, and he wonders why until he remembers that Bruce called him his assistant, he pulled a tiny splinter of bone out of Walter's daughter and everyone expects him to know what to do because he's a surgeon's extra pair of hands (apparently) and they're not.  
"I need," he starts, and then realizes the stupid futility of it because _he doesn't know what he needs_ , or where to start, or even enough of the alphabet to know if there's a book piled in a corner that will tell him. He needs Bruce to wake up and Bruce needs him and he's going to fail. Clint sags against Phil. He's a fraud, a liar.  
"I'll get it," Phil says, pushing him into the chair and easing back, keeping one steady hand on his shoulder. "What do you need?"  
His own pulse hammers in his head, his vision blurs and clears every time he moves his head. He has no idea.  
"Barton," Phil says, suddenly in front of his face (how did he move, Clint only blinked), holding Clint's jaw in his hand. "Barton, what do we do?"  
"Water," he says, wash his face, cool hands (Clint's aren't cool now, they burn, his whole body burns) or a cold cloth pressed to his face, but he was just healed from before, just back to normal. "And a cloth. Something."  
Walter moves away and comes back, time passes or it doesn't at all, Phil helps him stand up, and then holds the sodden rag over Bruce's face when Clint's knees buckle and he needs to sit on the floor. The waistband of his trousers is stiffening with dry blood. The bandage has peeled away and every time he moves it rips open again, stitches trailing.  
Someone coughs. It's all too far away. Maybe Phil tips his head up from his chest and pats his face around the bruises, telling him to wake up, wake up, or maybe he doesn't. Clint doesn't wake up (he isn't asleep, he's stuck between the cracks in the floorboards) until his head is held up and ether sloshes against his mouth.  
  
"Clint," Bruce says, kneeling in front of him alive and with a black right eye and bloody mouth. "I told you not to go anywhere."  
"After you," he slurs and it sounds more like affferooo but Bruce understands, he knows he does, because he looks disappointed and distraught (like he might cry at any minute) and all Clint ever does is ruin things.  
  
Someone with cold hands holds his head. Bruce Banner with another black eye, wearing unfamiliar spectacles, pushes stitches through his hip and this time it scorches through the ether. Clint doesn't remember anything after the press of two fingers to the side of his mouth, soft, like a kiss.  
  
  
  
It's light again - morning light - when he wakes up properly. Everything aches, but he's warm and comfortable and safe. Someone's holding his hand, which is nice, they're warm too, so he gives it a little squeeze. He's thirsty and fuzzy-headed and moving would be a terrible idea, but at least he's not alone. He squeezes the hand again, a thank you this time, firm and confident, and they jerk upright beside him, staring wild eyed at him from above.  
"Clint!" It's Bruce, purples and blues spread over one sharp cheekbone, lips cracked and eyes sunk in shadows. His freckles stand out on chalky skin like they were drawn in ink, but he's very much alive. They both are, it seems.  
"Thought you were dead," Clint rasps. His mouth is tacky with dry spit, his teeth stick to the insides of his lips and the day before is coming back in unpleasant, disordered chunks.  
Bruce starts to scramble upright. "I'll get some water," he mumbles, but Clint has a hold on his hand still and he isn't letting go, even if he doesn't have the strength (or courage) to actually pull him back down. They have a brief, gentle and anti-climatic tug of war (Bruce refuses to look at him) before he just gives up and curls up under the blankets again, settling on his side. They are still holding hands, arms twisted and folded between them.  
  
"You were breathing out blood," Clint croaks, "I thought you were going to die."  
"I just bit my cheek," he says, sharp knees digging into Clint's leg as he shifts closer (looking down, looking away) around their clasped hands and crooked elbows, "no teeth knocked out or anything, even."  
"You can't die," Clint tries again, and his voice wavers humiliatingly on the last word because it doesn't seem like Bruce is even listening to the important part of this and if he doesn't, something terrible and honest is going to come tumbling out of his mouth before he can stop it, and then who knows what will happen.  
"Phil helped me get you into bed," he continues, voice almost flat, still not looking up. "He said he liked you, that you're smart, that you should stay."  
"I thought you were going to die," Clint says, except he means _I don't want you to die_ and _I want to stay_ and _I like you_ it's completely obvious.  
"I won't die," Bruce whispers into his hair, voice rough like he's been crying or shouting, "I won't die and you can't either."


End file.
